


Worth the Wait

by newtypeshadow



Series: A Human, A Mer, and a Cephalo Walk into a Soulmates AU [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Merman Steve Rogers, Multi, Octoman Bucky Barnes, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:07:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22431574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newtypeshadow/pseuds/newtypeshadow
Summary: Tony stares at his wrists in shock. The numbers for his soulmarks are dropping—in tandem, like his numbers often are.His soulmates are closer to him than they've ever been before.Unfortunately, when Tony sees them, a relationship doesn't seem possible. After all, how can a human, a merman, and an octoman be together?
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, James "Bucky" Barnes/Tony Stark, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Series: A Human, A Mer, and a Cephalo Walk into a Soulmates AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1614256
Comments: 83
Kudos: 611
Collections: StarkSpangledWinter Wonderland Event, Tenebrific's Finished Fics





	Worth the Wait

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Stuckony server](https://discord.gg/jtXcc3n)'s StarkSpangledWinter Wonderland Event, for the following prompts:
> 
> SFW Prompt 53. Soulmate AU. (Multiple soul marks.) The number on their wrist changes according to distance but it’s not clear what distance. it could be inches, feet, kilometers, miles. Fluff, smut, or angst.
> 
> NSFW Prompt 20. Merpeople
> 
> Thanks to [TedraKitty](/users/TedraKitty), [free2bemee](/users/free2bemee), and [ishi25](/users/Ishi25/) from the server for betaing! Any mistakes you find are mine.

Tony stares at his wrists in shock. The numbers for his soulmarks are dropping—in tandem, like his numbers often are.

His soulmates are closer to him than they've ever been before.

When he realizes they're finally coming in from the ocean, Tony runs for his bungalow. It's built into the cliffside and the front third juts out over the ocean, which is visible through its durable but mostly-transparent floors. They're why Tony bought the house. The trail to his soulmates always stopped at the ocean. Well, _in_ the ocean. Maybe they're fishermen, or work on a submarine or undersea research facility and only surface every few months. Moreover, the trail always leads to this section of ocean. Tony wanted to be as close to them as possible next time they came up for air.

Which seems like it'll be now. Tony throws open the doors to the raised balcony, its white stone floor damp with sea spray, and squints across the horizon, looking for a boat or a diver or _something_. His numbers drop to one. Then—and this has never happened before—into decimals. They're _so close!_

But there's nothing. No one breaks the surface of the waves.

The numbers slow their descent. "No, no, no," Tony mutters. "C'mon, c'mon, please just—"

Zero. His soulmates are right on top of him.

They should be plainly visible, but as he looks out over the railing there's just _nothing_ , and nothing, and nothing. His distance counter is at zero, and he has no soulmates to show for it.

Tony's heart clenches. He's been dreaming of this day since he found out what the counters on his wrists meant, and now it's here, and it's… There's no one. He's alone in his house and there is no one on the water waiting to meet him.

Tony finally tears himself from the balcony and trudges back into the house, down the steps, and onto the transparent floor. The dim blue ocean underneath his bare feet mocks him. He slumps against the balcony stairs, defeated. His eyes water as he looks down at his traitorous wrist counters. Tony has not one, but two of them—already abnormal—and apparently neither one is attached to an actual soulmate. Even his defect has a defect. Perfect.

Something moves beneath his feet.

Tony startles violently and flails to his knees, because of _course!_ If they do undersea work they probably have breathing apparatuses and don't _need_ to surface—at least not yet. Maybe Tony is _literally_ right on top of them! The flooring is thick, too—they could knock on it all day and Tony wouldn't hear a thing! Why they didn't just yell up at the balcony is a mystery for later. For now, more than anything in his life, he wants to see them. He scrambles onto his hands and knees and peers into the clear, dim water.

There's… Something is down there. He catches a glimpse of a long, deep blue tail. Is there a whale or a shark, and that's why his soulmates haven't come out of the water yet? They're waiting for it to go away?

Suddenly he hears a thump coming from the floor—which theoretically shouldn't be possible without natural disaster-level force. Tony follows the sound and freezes.

Gigantic suckers from a gigantic red octopus arm are suctioning their way towards him across the underside of his floor.

 _Sweet baby Jesus_ are his soulmates getting mobbed by _literal sea monsters?_ What exactly do they _do_ deep in the ocean?

His left wrist tingles, the way it should when he and his soulmate first lock eyes. But Tony can't see—

_Holy fuck that giant octopus is attached to a man what the actual fuck?!_

The man has long dark hair that swirls around his pale face and watery blue eyes. It weaves sinuously around his muscular shoulders, which lead to a mouthwatering chest, then into a… a…

An octopus body. His soulmate's entire lower half is a gigantic octopus. What the ever-loving fuck is—

Another thump, on his right, makes Tony startle again. He catches a flash of that same pearlescent blue tail—and then nothing, and nothing, until the head and torso of a built blue-eyed blond who is apparently _attached to the tail at the waist_ swims up to the floor. Tony's right wrist tingles.

Holy hand-grenade-throwing Batman, Tony is soulmates with an octoman and a merman, both of whom are arrestingly gorgeous, and neither of whom are from species that actually exist.

A hysterical laugh bubbles out of his throat. He slumps onto his ass and presses his forehead to the cool floor. He needs a minute. His counters are at zero and his soulmates are smiling at him through his floor with abnormally sharp teeth, and they'll probably never surface _at all_ because they're fucking _sea creatures_ , the stuff of myths and legends.

A relationship with his soulmates is impossible. He's looked right at them, he knows their faces now, he's seen their fucking _octopus arms and fish tail_ , and they might as well be back at the bottom of the ocean because Tony's human and they're not. He's found his soulmates, but he doesn't get to keep them.

Black spots play along the edges of Tony's vision. His chest hurts. He feels like the air he's breathing is mostly water, like there's a weight on his chest and the air's too thin and can't get in past his neck. It hurts to breathe. It's _hard_ to breathe.

Tony collapses. He'd be doing his exercises to deal with what he dispassionately knows is a panic attack—the first he's had since his mom died alongside his dad—but most of his brain is shrieking and that's all he can pay attention to.

He shakes and gasps like a landed fish; how appropriate, he thinks hysterically. Distantly he hears splashes and thumps on the balcony. Then a large, wet hand is pulling him against a firm wet chest, and his octoman soulmate is kneeling in front of him on human legs and coaching him on how to breathe like a normal, functional, not-broken human being—first in Russian, then in English when he realizes Tony has no idea what he's saying.

"That's it," says his octopus-man soulmate, who currently has two muscular human legs and looks nothing at all like an octopus. He keeps Tony's hand pressed to his naked wet chest over his heart, which is where a human heart would go if his soulmate were actually human. "You're doing great."

"You have legs," Tony stutters, which is exactly the sort of suave opening to a first conversation with his soulmates he's imagined in countless ways at countless times throughout his life.

The brunet chuckles, and his teeth are perfectly white, straight, and only pointy where they're supposed to be. When he licks his lips his tongue is tantalizingly pink and perfect too. "Only sometimes," he says in a voice that's higher than Tony expected, but disarmingly smooth and warm.

"We got 'em for _you_ ," says the person behind him—the blond, whose voice is deeper, and whose jawline looks positively _edible_ from this angle.

Tony takes a breath that's less shallow than his last, and after a minute more, he's breathing normally again, if by normally one means taking huge gulps of air while his head swims. How can a panic attack take so little time yet be so exhausting? He slumps against whoever's holding him. "Well," he says into their watchful silence, "that was embarrassing. Not how I pictured the whole meeting-my-soulmates thing going."

The blond grins. "What, you didn't dream of a mer and a cephalo coming from the deep to take your breath away and knock you off your feet?"

The brunet rolls his eyes. "It's _sweep_ , Steve. _Sweep_ you off your feet."

"Don't blame me—blame my English teacher," the blond— _Steve_ —says with a smug, sassy grin that Tony takes to mean the brunet was that teacher.

The brunet confirms it with a snarky, "You're an ungrateful little minnow, you know that?"

"So my boyfriend tells me."

The brunet rolls his eyes. "We're doing this backwards. Hi," he says to Tony with a distractingly beautiful smile. "I'm James, but you can call me Bucky." He holds out a hand.

Tony shakes it on autopilot.

"I'm Steve," Steve says.

"Tony," Tony says. "Why do you have normal names? I think I might be in shock. You know neither of you are real, right?" At their confused frowns, he clarifies, "'Mers' and 'cephalos' aren't real. Are you from a government experiment? Perfect human fused with giant fish? Do you have gills?"

After a contemplative pause, Steve ticks off with his fingers, "They're our land names, not our sea names—our mouths can't even _say_ our sea names right up here. You _might_ be in shock? Maybe. We are very real, we just live deeper than humans tend to go. We _are_ part of a government experiment—it was the only way to get human legs so we could meet you. I'm, uh…" He flushes and skips number five. "We have gills, but not right now," he finishes.

Tony's brain sticks on 'so we could meet you.' These two gorgeous, sweet men let some government experiment on them literally so they could meet _him_.

His dad wouldn't even pay his ransom when the cash his kidnappers asked for amounted to chump change for a Stark. But these two volunteered to be lab rats for him. Tony's throat closes for a moment, and his chest warms and aches with the overwhelming knowledge that he means that much to a pair of perfect strangers.

Bucky chucks his chin and picks up the question Steve left out. "I'm happy you think we're perfect, doll," he says with a flirtatious grin when Tony looks up at him. He drops his hand to Tony's thigh, and very deliberately looks him up and down with a heated gaze. "You were definitely worth the wait."

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed the fic! If you did, please let me know via kudos and comments—they're super encouraging and I love receiving them. ^_^


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